Having lost her freeborn parents to a slave stealer at age six, tobacco-plantation fieldhand, Sunday Duval, is forever ruined for the hope of a lasting freedom. Resigned to her young son, July, as her only true happiness, Sunday is dismayed and angered by her husband Noah's request to join him on the Underground Railroad. But her outraged dismay is only a prelude.

After using deceit to push Noah toward joining the Railroad alone, she finds herself brutally separated from July, locked into an all-male coffle, and bound for the Ohio River and all points South. But what awaits her in Vicksburg, Mississippi, is not only the War Between the States but a shocking revelation from her new master.

Will July and Noah forever be lost to her, or will a war she had never imagined offer her a chance she had labeled impossible?